We were chatting away at work today about the rash of award ceremony shows on television. You know the ones I mean, Oscars, BAFTA's, Golden Globe etc,and I thought, how come it's always actors that get these awards for just doing their job? They go along to work, making a film, get paid handsomely for doing so, and then expect an Oscar 6 months later. It doesn't happen to the ordinary Joe in the street.
You've got roadsweepers, dustmen, cleaners, a multitude of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs out there and do they expect an award at the end of it? Just a job well done from the boss, a rise and an extra weeks holiday a year would be nice, but not an award, eh!
You can just imagine it though-
"Here we are at the RCA's,(Refuse Collectors Awards.) 2004
And the nominations for best kept Refuse truck are,
Crew 7, Scunthorpe Environmental Service.
Bert Brocklebank, driving the truck called Dennis.
and finally
Smelly Alan and his crew from the Big Yellow Hopper.
Well, today saw the start of the Christmas craft fair trail, which is going to be a feature of my Sundays up until the big day itself.
I was dragged along to Oakwell Hall Christmas Craft Fair today along with hundreds of other wallets. Apart from the stalls offering the usual fare, there was some entertainment laid on in the form of the Clifton Handbell Ringers clanging their way through some seasonal ditties. In the courtyard was The Ugly Mug Jug Band, a fearsome foursome with a banjo, guitar, washboard, harmonica and jug. They played some pretty good music, a sort of jazz meets skiffle. Mmmm, Nice! The Sally Army Brass Band finished off the days proceeding with Carols.
My itinery over the next few Sundays,( and a Saturday, just in case we miss anything.)
Dec 5th- Cannon Hall Christmas Fair.
Dec 11th- Grassington Dickensian Christmas Fayre.
Dec 12th- Bagshaw Museum with candlelit procession.
Dec 19th- Christmas 1940's style at Redhouse.
I think my wallet will be well and truly Craft Faired out by the end of that lot!
Further to my old pals post, this same old pal pointed me in the direction of a website all about the squadron I was in during the seventies.
The site is called ShineytwoJag, and even for a non-forces type, is still a good read and a valuable insight into what we got up to in those days. Click the link if you want to.
Well the Christmas lights have been switched on in town, ( a few coloured flashing lightbulbs compared to the Regent street lights in London.) Thursday late night shopping has started, the brass band is playing on the street corner, the burger and hot-dog man is selling hot chestnuts alongside his usual ware, the big issue sellers are out in force.( we've got one that sings, and up until recently had one that said "Hello, how are you," in a jolly voice, to everyone, instead of the usual "Big Isshooo." ) The shops all nicely decorated up.
Whatever happened to the practice of getting enough supplies in to last over the Christmas holidays, because the shops were shut for a few days?
I'll tell you why.You don't need to do this anymore because the shops hardly close for the holidays. The shop I work in is closing Christmas Day and Boxing Day then re-opens it's doors on the Monday. The supermarkets are doing the same except some of them are opening on the Sunday. Great you say, I won't need to get a lot in because I can always nip to the shops to get some more.
But, and there is a but, we shopworkers miss the boat on this. The shops expect us to work these days, so the public can come in and shop and spend lots of money, but if the shops stayed closed for the bank holidays, everybody wins.
How?
1. The shopworkers get a decent break to be with their families.
2. The public will still shop and spend their money.
3. The shops won't have to pay a workforce for two days and will save on heating and electricity and they still get the customers spending the same, albeit two days later.
The main culprit in all this is the public. If they didn't expect shops to open all hours then they wouldn't. Pointless opening if you don't get any customers.
So if you would like to gain the respect of a shopworker and help them to have a decent break, stock up for Christmas and I'll see you in the New Year.
An old friend from my RAF days got in touch with me today.
I'd seen his name on the MOD reunited website and left him a message ages ago, and then forgot about it. If, like me, you don't check it so often, I can understand the delay.
The site is similar to Friends re-united,only for ex-servicemen/women of the British armed forces and what's more, unlike Friends re-united, it's a free service. You can even get a free E-mail address. So if you used to be in the forces, check it out.
I knew this guy when I was at RAF Laarbruch in Germany, way back in the seventies, in the days when aircraft were steam powered. An Airman I knew, used to say that he'd had been in the airforce so long that when God said "Let there be light," guess who was Duty Electrician.
I got to know lots of people in the RAF and I've forgotten most of their names, so, maybe with the help of my re-found old pal, it may jog my memory.
After all, remember, I've only got two brain cells.
The Smallfaces brought out a song in the sixties called "Lazy Sunday Afternoon." One of these Sundays I might get a lazy one, but at the moment I'm fully booked up till Christmas.
I thought today would be a lazy one but it didn't turn out that way. As I'm up for work during the week at 6.30am, I always have a bit of a lie in on Sunday mornings, so there I was nicely dozing, when the wife said, "Are you getting out of bed yet, I want you to run me down to the plant fair in town then there's dance class for your daughter."
I knew then that my morning of slumber was shortlived. It was no good trying to stall or linger, when my wife is on a mission, she follows it through to the end with ruthless efficiency. Needless to say, that within 30 mins, I was showered, breakfasted and on the road, my nice warm bed but a distant dream.
After faffing about at the plant fair and parting with some cash it was to the dance studios for my daughters dance class. Half an hour of sheer boredom, trying to look interested. After dance class, I was whisked of to the supermarket so that I could part with more cash. Here's a question- How come you spend more money than the week before and you seem to have got less goods in your trolley?
After cooking dinner then washing up it wasn't long before the kids bathtime. One or two little chores left to do, then maybe I can have that lazy Sunday.
After my post about the hoodies, Desmond wrote about the problems he has in his own country with teenagers. Somebody left a very bad comment with profanity on his doodleboard. Now I don't mind anyone leaving a comment, after all people have differing opinions on any subject. What I don't like is the swearing, it's gutter.
And still the hoodies carry on. A local village hall was holding it's weekly Yoga class the other night whilst hoodies were stoning the windows. Saddening.
On a lighter note, if you really want to know your elf name so that you can help Santa at Christmas, click the link. Mines Tumbleflump Hotdog-Tinker. I haven't told the wife, especially as hers is Fuzzy Hotdog-Baubles.
For the benefit of anyone reading this who is not from Yorkshire, we had some unexpected snow on Thursday and it's flipping freezing outside. And if your surfing in on blog-explosion, please feel free to use your 30 secs to say hello in the doodleboard in the sidebar, that's it, a little bit further down. Now write Hi! I,m **** from ******. Leave your URL and I'll visit your site. Get the picture!
There seems to be a new fashion going around Britain amongst younger teenagers. I'm referring to the practice of wearing hooded jackets. The youngsters say it's a fashion but other people are saying it's a uniform for the gangs of lads who hang around street corners causing bother and intimidating older folk.
Although you will always have a bad apple amongst these kids, on the whole I dare say the majority of them are generally sound, just gullible. It doesn't take much to get a kid who is desperate to join the gang, whipped up to a frenzy, where he would do things he wouldn't normally do.
The bus drivers of a certain area, in my town have refused to go there after 5pm because they keep getting pelted by stones and bricks from gangs of "hoodies". Even firemen have had the same treatment when attending emergency calls. The police have diverted resources to provide extra patrols and are considering a curfew. I hope it gets sorted soon.
Another incident which prompted me to write this post happened in my own store. Some "hoodies" were messing about on the escalator, and when they were challenged by the security guard they ran off and out off the store, but on the way out the last one hit the escalator emergency stop button which promptly stopped the thing. Not expecting anything an elderly woman pitched forward and lost her feet and ended up tumbling down the motionless escalator. She ended up in A&E. Wether she's going to sue we don't know. We had security cameras on, but with their hoods up you can't see any faces.
A local night club is holding a special 14 to 18 yr only dance shortly however the management have made it clear that kids wearing hoodies,trainers and trackies will not be let in.
While they're dancing I hope the parents chuck their hooded jackets out.
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"I've managed to find a bit of space in the top box." says the wife.
"Right, let's put the Scalextric there." says I.
Yes it's that time of year when Santas presents have got to be hidden until the big day. I've been buying the odd toy or game, that the kid's want for Christmas for a while now, but we're running out of space to store them. I've got one in the boot of the car at the moment and I haven't got a clue were it's going. I'll probably end up hiding it in the garage till it's all clear to put in the loft. You've got to do these things when the kids are at school or asleep, and as my lad never seems to drop of till late, it looks like I'll be skulking about in the dark. It gets worse when it's time to wrap them, that's usually the week before Christmas and at that time they've already broke up from school for the holidays. My two still believe in Santa so I need to keep the secrecy.
Looks like I'll be having a few late nights in the run-up.
Having waited for weeks to get a visit from the union area organizer, he finally showed up today.
He was supposed to go through my duties and responsibilities as a union rep, but could only stay 10 minutes because he had to dash off to represent someone at a industrial tribunal. In the short time he was with me, he told me that he's going to send me on a course in Febuary, and promised to come back next Thursday in order to hold a members surgery, and also go through what he should have told me today. Oh well, at least I put a face to the voice I hear on the phone. You never know, by the end of next week, there may be a fair chance I'll know what I'm supposed to do.
The Christmas shoppers are out in force this week. I know that us shopworkers like to get an early start to the festive season, but usually, the customers are a bit sluggish to respond in any numbers. Not so this year. Last Thursday we had a late night opening event and the store was packed. We took a lot more money than a similar event last year. With the crowds come the squabbling customers. They are mortified if you run out of a particular line before Christmas. It won't be long before the customers are fighting over the dwindling stock.
I cooked the evening meal today.(Before you start, I do it quite often on Sundays, cooking that is!)
A nice Balti Tomato and Coriander chicken curry a la Pataks with rice. It was a work of art. Whilst I was preparing it, I opened a bottle of French red and switched on the radio to BBC Radio 3 and was rewarded with a rendition of a Mozart symphony. I popped my head into the lounge to see what was happening, and to my horror the wife had Sade playing on the Hi-Fi, shortly followed by disco music. I swiftly retreated to the kitchen, to the calm and peace of Mozart.
After the meal and the washing up was done, the wife was watching Antiques Roadshow, so I snuck into the kitchen with the portable CD player, armed with my birthday CD, Status Quo- Excess All Areas, wopped the volume up, and did a satisfying air guitar session.(Somebody has got to do it, and I am at that age!)
Like most towns and cities across the world, my town has it's fair share of buskers on the street.
The ones here are mostly guitar players, and none of them can play very well, but outside our store, for the last few Saturdays, we've had a violin player. This guy can really play and he's earning stacks of money, but it's not his violin playing that's making him successful, it's the fact that he's got a puppet of a devil strapped to his knee. All he has to do is jiggle his leg up and down and the devil dances in time to his fiddle. Of course, any little kid walking past loves him and Mum or Dad feels obliged to chuck a few coins in his hat. Quite frankly, he's coining it.
I asked him today if he's going to replace the devil with a Santa in the next few weeks.
"Naw," he replied. " Santas too nice, it'll have to be Scrooge!"
He's got a mean streak has that one, just like me....
My darling wife said to me tonight, "Have you got your chumps ready for tomorrow night."
Chumps for anyone who doesn't know, are the materials that make up your annual Guy Fawkes bonfire. They can be anything from old newspapers to railway sleepers. If it's combustible, it's a chump.
The word chump brought me back to when I was a young lad. We always had a bonfire on the 5th of November on the field at the back of our houses. All of my mates and myself would be out chumping for weeks before the big event. We'd knock on everybody's door asking if they had any chumps. Usually it was a pile of newspapers but if we got lucky it could be an old sideboard or some doors that someone was chucking out. We'd transport the chumps back to the bonfire site on a kart made of two planks and some old pram wheels.
We would always guard our ever growing bonfire from marauding gangs of boys from other parts of the estate. We'd build a den inside the bonfire, were we could keep a watch from. (Not a sensible idea on reflection.) There was always some looting from ours at times when there was no one on guard, but then again we would be looting from other bonfires, so it sort of evened itself out.
About a week before the event, we'd get some old clothes and stuff them full of paper to make a "Guy". We would once more go knocking on doors asking for "A penny for the Guy," at the same time pointing to a pathetic looking thing we'd propped up in the Kart. Mind you we were proud of our "Guy" especially when he took centrepiece on top of the bonfire.
I'll be having a modest fire in the back garden tomorrow night and setting off a few fireworks.
I've discovered that my 7yr old son is a ladykiller.
It all started when he brought home an invitation from his schoolmate, that he knocks about with, to go to the pantomime with him and his family in January. Apparently they buy a family ticket which covers two adults and three kids, and as they've only got a boy and a girl they asked my lad if he'd like to go.
We got talking about pantos and he remembered that he went to one last year with the school. He then announced that besides going with his pal, he's going to take his girlfriends as well.
"Girlfriends?" I said, in a sort of, am I hearing correctly, type of voice.
"Yes Dad, I've got two, and so has my friend." he replied in a smug way.
Now at the risk of being called old fashioned, all I wanted to do with girls when I was 7, was pull they're pigtails not take them to pantos. What's happening up at that school? At playtime, instead of playing hopscotch, it'll be canoodling behind the bikesheds. I wonder if they hold hands beneath the desk. It was all "Man from U.N.C.L.E." in my days, not "Master and Missus". Girls were there,to be shunned by the boys, not taken out to the panto.
Oh,Oh, wait a minute, he's a handsome lad is mine, I'm not surprised the girls fancy him.
Married with two children. A boy age 14 and a girl age 12. I have 4 goldfish,a black and white cat just like Postman Pat, a 7yr old Ford Focus 'C' Max and a mortgage.
The White Rose Of Yorkshire
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